Little girls who sew pink ribbons to their toe shoes often practise in ballet studios with Edgar Degas prints on the walls. Or they have Degas posters of dancers in 19th century Paris in their rooms, above the ballet bars they pressure their fathers to put up.

Degas was the famous French Impressionist who painted canvases of dancers rehearsing, or caught in such mundane acts as adjusting a slipper. His paintings are ethereal, as are his sculptures, and his dancers seem to float off the canvas. He inspired and continues to inspire would-be ballerinas everywhere.

He also inspired another powerful artist, Mary Cassatt, who painted with the same passion and dedication. She was an American who became an integral part of his life and possibly his lover. That’s the fictional story of their lives that Robin Oliveira chooses to tell in I Always Loved You. In real life, they knew each other and he certainly played a mentoring role when she moved to Paris. They are described as close friends.

Oliveira writes about the love affair of two artists and two equals. Cassatt is as strong and opinionated as Degas. She defied her wealthy family, notably her father, to live as an artist in Europe and Degas’ influence in having her work chosen for the Paris Salon was critical to her success. She often painted domestic life, showing a mother bathing or soothing a child, letting the viewer share an intimate moment.

Oliveira begins I Always Loved You in 1926, after the death of Degas and the year of Cassatt’s own passing. It’s a poignant chapter. Cassatt is practically blind, an insufferable fate for an artist. Degas, too, had eye problems, but he was able to paint long after his eyesight began to deteriorate.

Cassatt is alone with his letters, which she keeps in a box tied with a faded pink ribbon. She thinks of her friends during the Belle Époque era when artists flourished. It’s heart-breaking as she fingers the letters, remembering words of the man she clearly loves. Neither had ever said the words to the other. The chapter ends simply: “So many pages, you’d think they had been in love.”

We don’t learn the answer but this is such an enchanting book, we want it to be true, as it is in Oliveira’s imagination and in our own.

The Shadow Queen

By Sandra Gulland

HarperCollins, 321 pages, $29.99

The Shadow Queen is the perfect fantasy read for a weekend lounging with an escapist novel. This second book in Gulland’s Sun Court series is set in the extravagant world of Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV.

Sandra Gulland based her book on the real life story of actress Françoise-Athénaïs de Montespan, mistress to the Sun King and reigning “Shadow Queen.” She is beautiful, seductive and powerful, charming the king through increasingly dark arts. She constantly worries about rivals and is severely tested during the l’Affaire des Poisons, the scandal that involves secret poisons and sacrificed infants.

De Montespan’s childhood friend, Claudette (based on Claude de Vin des Oeillets) becomes her personal attendant, guarding secrets and carrying out dangerous errands. Also an actress, she gets involved with the king, unaware of the consequences. Their first encounter is comical.

He’s a disappointment to her. He’s the same height and can’t untie a red bow at his neck. “His Majesty stood before me then: a man in clocked silk stockings, he was well-proportioned, muscled, yet of modest parts — as the gossipers had long claimed.”

Gulland doesn’t allow readers to imagine only jewels and sumptuous gowns. She shows us the decay that surrounds this empty fairytale. Claudette searches for her missing brother and finds him in a dungeon that smells of “rot and feces.” Hundreds of rag-covered men lie on soiled straw and she sees them cringing in fear of brutal jailers. “I saw one lying dead.”

In the slippery world of the Sun King’s court, anyone can go from palace to dungeon, a life changed in an instant by a whisper of betrayal. Gulland has chosen her era well and her lively, pull-no-punches style and spot-on imagery hide her impeccable research.

Linda Diebel is a Star journalist and non-fiction writer.

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